This week we begin a new book of the Torah, the fourth, whose name is Bamidbar (in the desert). Classical commentaries call this book the Book of Accounts (which is why it is also known as Numbers). The reason for this is that throughout the book, God commands the Jewish people to count several times.
When we analyze how these counts were performed, we find a peculiar matter: the Jewish people are always counted by families. As the verse states (Numbers 1:2): "Count the heads of the whole congregation of the Children of Israel according to their families." While the numbers recorded in the Torah correspond to each tribe, in practice, the count was done family by family. In other words, the basic unit of counting, and therefore the basic unit comprising the Jewish people, is the family.
This was also the case in the Giving of the Torah, where God commanded Moses to transmit the laws of preparation for the event itself, first to the women and then to the men, thus including the entire family (see Exodus 19:3). Similarly, when God created the first Man, the Torah tells us that he received Divine blessing and was called Man only when he had his companion (see Genesis 5:2).
From these places (and others) we see that the family, within the Jewish tradition, is the fundamental component of the entire community, from which it develops, grows, and endures through time. However, the idea is not family for the sake of family itself, nor family for companionship, but family for the sake of children; that is, for the purpose of creating a suitable, pure, and holy environment in which children can grow up and reveal God's presence on earth.
We live in times when people think about their own individuality, their own interests and pleasures, and what they "gain" by spending (or not spending) time with their spouse. We live in times when women are more concerned with career advancement than with successfully raising their children, and when men are more concerned with earning more money than spending time with their families. It is in this context that the Torah teaches us, in this parashah, through the telling of "families," that the core of Jewish existence is the family. In other words, the way in which family members—men, women, and children—are raised will determine the future of the Jewish people more than any other kind of material aspirations.